TESOL 2014 Through Gamification and Complexity Theory

Going to the TESOL Convention in Portland last March made me feel realized as an English teacher for two reasons: first, that was the second time I had the pleasure of attending an international convention; second, I was there as a presenter! Last year, my friend and co-worker Carolina Barreto and I decided to submit our workshop and, fortunately,  it was accepted to the TESOL 2014. Both of us were anxious to be presenters in a foreign country to an audience from all over the world. The result could not be better - the spectators were engaged for 1h45 minutes, actively participating in the hands-on activities we were demonstrating in the workshop named BREAKING THE ICE - Going beyond simple icebreakers through motivation.

I am a teacher who loves creating games to use in class with my students, so the topics that caught my attention were the ones related to the use of technology or practical games. I have to confess that I did not see many innovations in terms of technologies in the classroom. For this reason, I have to admit that the work we do at the Casa may be considered at par with the most recent trends in terms of Mobile Learning.

One of the presentations I attended drew my attention because it was called The Gamification Of Learning Outcomes  (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxrfi4WnBTonOWRieFFlWDRVQTQ/edit?pli=1) . In that presentation, 3 professors from Colorado first clarified that gamification is not game. After briefly mentioning some theoretical aspects of language and technology, they exemplified with their work with foreign students, using facts, statistics and results.  They ended their presentation showing the survey they did with those students about that work, and, at that time, did another survey with the audience. (https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5ciU5FolfhxKfC5) Each person had to use his/her own mobile phone to send his/her opinion about the presentation.  The results were shown on the screen. It was dynamic, easy and interesting.

Attending  the session Think like a Video Game Designer to Build Better Courses, by Josh Wilson, from the Kansai Gaidai University, I became aware of many concepts about games that I had never realized before, such as: games are fail positive environments; games escape from the real world; games are learning tools and learning platforms; games design the experience for choice and to be won; and some others. These concepts are certainly going to help my reflection upon the games I create to use in class.

In my opinion, the top presentation was the one by the famous linguist Diane Larsen-Freeman, Complexity Theory: Renewing Our Understanding of language, Learning, and Teaching. Besides admiring her ideas and her culture for a long time, I liked the fact that she spoke for about an hour about how language changes day-by-day, and we, teachers, have to be aware of those evolutions and adopt them in our classes. In her words, she manages to introduce some humor to make the audience feel comfortable and engaged in her lecture. It was a blast!

TESOL 2014 - Some iPad Tips

TESOL is definitely an overwhelming experience. One has so much to explore that is almost impossible to see everything you want. While I was there I learned a lot from the presentations or workshops I attended. I saw things I already knew through a new angle and I also discovered some new things that I think is worth sharing with our teaching community. So, let me tell you about some iPad tricks and apps worth exploring. 

Remote desktop access

                                   

There are solutions that allow you to control your desktop while walking around the class that do not rely on a wireless mouse. At TESOL, two teachers reported using two apps that have such affordances. One application that wirelessly mirrors your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch screens to any Mac or PC is Reflector.  To allow desktop control you will have to install it to your PC and your device. Besides that, one can connect multiple devices to the same screen. One license allows you to install it in up to five PCs.

Another one that has the same feature is Doceri. Doceri also lets you control your desktop from your device (iPad, iPhone, iPod) with the added feature of transforming it into a smart board once it allows you to draw and annotate any file that can be shown on your Mac or PC. The drawback being that licenses have a price, the good thing is that they help us get rid of the cumbersome cable and let us roam free around class while displaying whatever is being shown in our mobile devices’ screens.. Reflector and Doceri allow  free trials. So, you can download them and see how they work for you. 

Giving control to students

If you have a blue tooth keyboard that connects to your device, how about connecting it to your iPad and creating interactive activities. You can pass it around class and your students can perform some tasks displayed on the big screen if you mirror your iPad using a cable or one of the apps suggested above. You could create quizzes or have a competition to answer questions. If you have more than one keyboard, it becomes even more interesting. 

Turning your iPad into a Speaking Device

How about turning your iPad or iPhone into a speaking machine? To do this, you will just have to activate the text to speech feature. You will have to go to settings, general, accessibility, speak auto-text (turn it on), then choose the language. This will allow you to listen any text you select. It also reads out loud whatever you are typing. You can use to read your e-mails for you if you are busy doing something else. In class, you can use it for dictation or to improvise a listening comprehension task. By the way, you will have to adjust the speaking rate to turtle or hare on speak selection. 

TESOL 2014 - Professional Development for Novice Teachers

As a teacher trainer and a researcher in teacher development, when attending the TESOL Conference in Portland last week, I gave preference to the sessions related to this field. Some of them focused on the trainer’s role and how initiatives towards teachers should be conducted. Others focused on the teachers’ role in engaging in professional development. All of them were truly interesting and added new insights to my knowledge on the topic.  However, one specific talk called my attention, for , besides being related to novice teachers, the ones I’m closer to at our institution, it addressed the teachers’  and the trainers’ perspectives.

The talk conducted by Dr. Liz England, from Shenandoah University in Virginia, revolved around an experience she had gone through when organizing and delivering a sixteen-hour orientation program for novice professionals as English Teaching Assistants – ETAs -  at the start of their programs. The group of novice teachers had just gotten their BAs in different fields and most did not have any background in TESOL.  This group of seventy-five professionals accepted the challenge of going to Malaysia to work with groups of kids and teens in primary and secondary schools. 

The first aspect pointed out by Dr. England was related to the beliefs the group of professionals had in the beginning of the training program and, afterwards, how they changed their points of view in such a short period of time. First of all, the group was made up of Americans; therefore, they believed that because of being native speakers, they would face fewer challenges than non-native EFL teachers. Second, they thought that lesson planning wouldn’t be important since they had many activities and nice ideas in mind. And third, they bet they wouldn’t have problems concerning classroom management, for they were nice, young, and cool teachers.

As Dr. England went on describing the instant training program she had been required to deliver and all the challenges she had faced, I started thinking about how I myself sometimes feel when I wish I had a magic formula to give novice teachers to make them feel ready and confident to teach any groups.

For us, teachers and teacher trainers, it’s meaningless to point out all the reasons why a sixteen-hour course will never be enough to prepare a teacher to face the numerous different situations a classroom presents, but, as Dr. England mentioned, if we trainers have little time to help inexperienced teachers, we must make the most it.

After the sixteen-hour orientation program, a survey was conducted to verify how helpful the training was and in what ways it could be improved.  Having already faced the first difficulties in teaching, most of the ETAs pointed out that what they could benefit the most from in the training was related to lesson planning and classroom management, for these were the most challenging aspects of their new experience.

By getting this feedback, I could confirm the idea that despite where novice teachers come from and the particularities of the English language programs they are involved in, the target issues in teacher training are pretty much the same. Thus, I felt really pleased to acknowledge that the training and development opportunities the Casa Thomas Jefferson has offered to novice teachers are in sync with the most updated research conducted in the field of language teaching and training. Also, I reviewed my own passion for the field I’ve chosen to dedicate myself to, and own proud of being part of such a wonderful team of teachers and teacher developers.

TESOL 2014 Educational Snapshots

I could be here focusing on the interesting ideas that I learned from presenters in the TESOL Conference 2014, but by having the snapshots, quick notes I took during some sessions, you  might come across interesting references, links and people that will inspire you. 

Some topics that caught my attention:

Many Intersections Sessions that I attended focused on Mobile Learning. It is noticeable that though we all work in different contexts, the challenges are very similar, lack of infrastructure, difficulties with bandwidth in an ipad rollout program. Teacher training is also in the agenda of every Institution who wants to have a successful program. In my notes, I added some apps and resources that were mentioned. One thing that I missed was more presentations on learning outcomes with a more intensive use of mobile devices. Any qualitative and quantitative differences in the results of students who have been using smartphones/tablets and the ones who are not?

Marsha Chan, in her presentation on how to help students improve their oral communication skills, suggested using Youtube Playlists to help students find relevant content for further practice. At the end of my notes, you can find Marsha´s notes with all the links she mentioned. 

Nick Robinson´s advice and thoughts on the future of ELT publishing really got me hooked. Many interesting points about possibilities for self-publishing and concrete examples already in the market. I had the pleasure to meet Andy Boon (thanks to Nicky Hockly!), one of the authors in a self-publishing/independent project. We were immediately hooked to the story and downloaded the multi-pathways stories available in Kindle. You can learn more about those great interactive stories at http://atama-ii.com . Learn more about Nick Robinson´s ideas at http://www.eltjam.com/  and https://twitter.com/nmkrobinson 

Another excellent presentation that got me with an irresistible thirst for more was one on gamification by Josh Wilson, who focused on the game-like mentality for educators to prepare better, more engaging lessons. Josh´s presentation was much more focused on the strategies and mechanics that we can learn from a game designer mindset to make our students learn in a more enjoyable way, not in the aspects that many consider as the core of a gamified lesson, points and badges. Not at all. Josh consistently mentioned that these are just part of the sum. Here are some key concepts:

Design the experience

Quantify everything (score; progress)

give choices

External pressure

Constant feedback 

Design the context

Imagine your learners as players

In fact, this is an area that I´ve been consistently studying, and two resources that you might want to check, a Google Talk, Smart Gamification: Designing the Player Journey with expert Amy Jo Kim

Also, the book "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction" by Karl Kapp

Another presentation that was very useful, highly intense in terms of ed tech resources we can use in our classrooms was Lea Sobocan´s digital tools session. I´ve just checked her scoop it, which is a true gem: http://www.scoop.it/t/tech-gems-for-teachers 

I could go on and on with my highlights of TESOL 2014, but I´m sure you´ll find your own treasures by exploring my Evernote notes with some great presentations I had the chance to attend. I´d love to know what you found.

Crossposted at http://carlaarena.com/tesol-2014-snapshots

TESOL 2014 - How Wide is the World of Pronunciation?

With every year that passes, TESOL is acquiring a more egalitarian personality and is more dedicated to the recognition of the various purposes for English teaching, the broad spectrum of ownerships of the somewhat organically mutating language that we know as English, the ways in which this language unites many different collectives around the world. That’s a long sentence; in a way, it tries to convey the scope of the conference we attended and the direction it took. 

Among some of the teaching concerns being approached along refreshing new lines is pronunciation. With the acceptance of the nature of English as a multi-communicative connector, the influence of pronunciation is also shifting slightly in intent and interpretation. In previous conferences, I have attended several sessions dedicated to a focus on pronunciation as having a form of purifying influence on the production of English, creating exercises and games to attend to the oral exactness of the “th”, the shaping of vowel sounds, the oddly difficult combination of “orld” in “world”, etc. Attention to pronunciation more recently is not related to what, in the past, were common references like “standard American English”, “standard collegiate English”, etc. After all, what is “standard” in South Carolina is not necessarily standard in Oregon or Nevada, and the “college” in question might be in Sidney, Glasgow, London, New york, or somewhere in South Africa or India. 

Twenty speakers in different locations around the world might give surprisingly different renditions of the following sentence: “I hurt myself working on the hood of the car in the late half of the day.” What is definitely a priority concern is the intelligibility of the message, the immediacy of its power to communicate; this concept broadens the scope of how to regard pronunciation and its effective connection  – for better or for worse – to the result of an attempt at general communication.

One of the sessions I attended took me momentarily back to a bus tour that I took some years ago in Scotland.  I was sitting right behind the bus driver and happy to be receiver of many side comments he made during the trip; one of these remarks was offered to describe what a large number of laborers were doing on the road at almost dusk…the driver said they were walking/working on the road, and in my interpretation of the driver’s tone, neither activity was appropriate for that time of day. The problem was one involving accent; I couldn’t for the life of me determine (even upon further inquiry) whether those people were “walking” or “working”, because of the pronunciation of the vowel in the main verb….and no amount of repetition on the driver’s part shed any definitive light on the subject. I finally decided that those men just shouldn’t be on the road doing anything and would be better off at some nearby pub. End of subject. 

Fortunately, the subject of pronunciation has not ended, and this conference was an example of the variety of views that are developing with regard to the influence of pronunciation on communication and to how general is the acceptance that the “native English speaker” is not “the” norm, but - instead – just one of them.            

Katy Cox

TESOL 2014 Highlights

Participating in International conferences is an amazing opportunity to network and see what is going on in the world concerning education. This was my first time as a presenter but my second time as a TESOLER. And I can say this was a great chance of seeing how Casa Teachers are avant garde in so many areas! People stop us when they see we belong to the Casa and anxiously ask us when our presentation is going to be once they are used to attending them and always learning something new, creative and interesting! It's a pleasure to work in such a well recognized bi-national center!
Also, I am the incoming EFL -IS chair elect (2014/2015) of TESOL and this was a totally different experience and I have to confess I was kind of frightened. I didn't know what I was going to do... But I must say that keeping in touch with the EFL community from all over the world is rewarding and enriching.
All in all, sharing is of great relevance and I am sure I myself benefited a lot not only as a professional but also as a person; and my students will consequently profit from my experiences.

          by  Carol Barreto

The Art of Designing eTasks

There are at least two different ways to help teachers who are designing iPad activities with students to evaluate the tasks they create. The  SAMR  model helps a  teacher/task designer become aware of what stage the task falls into in terms of the use of tech.  The Bloom Taxonomy applied to apps helps teachers think about the kind of questions we ask students and how we should vary the tasks we offer. By delivering the workshop From Image to Deep Learning, I started to understand that  teachers can also look into the learning cycle as a whole, and how the human learning brain works to promote deep learning. The ideas I share here were inspired by the book The Art of Changing the Brain, which is a must read for any educator willing to take a look into the biology behind learning.

In the workshop, I asked the audience how to teach questions with does to teens, and develop tasks having the learning cycle in mind. After a quick debriefing, I showed a simple iPad activity I carried out in class of 11-year-olds, talked about my take in the lesson, and expanded on why I think this task pleases the learning brain. Now, I post my ideas here to help me reflect on my practice, having the learning cycle described in the aforementioned book in mind.

I showed students a quiz about a famous person I knew they would be interested in. Students took the quiz, and I inductively helped them notice how to make questions about a third person`s likes and dislikes. Then, I asked them to gather information about a celebrity they follow to make a quiz of their own.
I was afraid that I`d have no pictures to work with on the following class, but to my surprise, students had bought the idea and had pictures and lots of information to work with. I was ready to go, so I set the iPad activity and monitored students. Here is what two pairs produced using a wonderful app called visualize.

In the art of changing the brain, Zull talks about phase 1 - concrete experience. In this phase, there is activity in the sensory cortex, where we receive, gather and begin to process the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory information. Phase 2 - reflexive observation, seems to describe an activity that takes place in the integrative cortex. It is time to connect sensory images to prior experience in one`s neural network or schemas. In class, passing from phase 1 to phase 2 might take time as learners need to relate new information to what they already know. We cannot rush. We must allow time for thinking/recalling as well as time to reflect upon the learning experience.

In the activity I proposed, my students were exposed to a visually appealing quiz about a person they were genuinely interested in, and took the quiz themselves to find out how much they knew about the person. As I see it, students went through stage one and two of the learning cycle before we started the second part of the activity.

In phase 3 - abstract hypothesizing, the front integrative cortex is at work. Students start to prepare to do something with the recently acquired knowledge. In the iPad activity, I asked students to get the information about their favorite celebrities and start to put it in the format of a quiz for the other students in class. And by asking students to make these quizzes to communicate their recently acquired knowledge, teachers allow students time to test their hypothesis and think. In phase 4 - active testing, students shared their quizzes, and by doing so, provided peers with concrete experiences, so the whole class was back to phase 1. Learning becomes cyclical and on going, and hopefully they will remember the language point long after the day of the test.

In conclusion, instead of asking students to pay attention, it is better when we can engage students in tasks in which they  are supposed to reach outcomes, or ask them to look at the topics from different angles. Instead of sitting still, learners could be asked to move around to see the details. In other words, by making learning more concrete, we might reach concrete outcomes.

The Teacher - Only Human

The teacher is only human, after all. The repeated emphasis on students’ needs indirectly encourages forgetting about those of the teacher. Male or female, the human ego feeds on reward and recognition, and your teacher ego perks right up when a student loves to respond, laughs at your jokes, asks you for help as though you were the last life-saver on the boat. 

You use your instructional energy generously and it doesn’t really take much to – in return – make you feel like a good looking genius. Therein lies the cyclical danger. The teacher’s well-known duty is to pay equal attention to all students -  to prevent the guilty recognition that the girl in the left-hand corner never says a thing because she is not spoken to; to avoid having to admit that most of your lesson moved energetically along with lots of participation but – come to think of it – not from the left-hand side of the room. Why can’t you remember the face of what’s-his-name who always sits by the door (and who eases smoothly out of that exit as soon as the bell rings)? Even the trouble-makers are more appealing, testing your patience and your class management skills; victories with these in-your-face challenges can make you feel especially self-congratulatory….while the “escape artists” shroud themselves in a cloak of invisibility as they look for a dropped pen, a misplaced paper, a book in a backpack, and successfully evade the teacher’s attention (which is inevitably on the eager beavers with their hands in the air…).

The skilled fugitive knows how to keep his head down; the wave of willing responses will satisfy the also needy elicitor… Every teacher should have a fool-proof system of checking production frequency among all 12 or 16 or 20 students – who spoke, how often, how much – and making sure they know who you are and that you care. In ensuring uniformity and truly collaborative direction in your work in the classroom, your heart-strings are not as consistent a guide as your intellect and your eyes.   

Katy Cox

Pairwork Activities - If Students Aren´t Sharing, They are Not Pairing

What is a “pair”? The American Heritage dictionary begins its definition of this word by calling it “Two corresponding persons or items similar in form or function”. 

For the purpose of language teaching or any other kind of teaching, for that matter, the “corresponding” aspect is of the greatest pertinence. A moment comes in a great many lesson plans when the teacher thinks, for example, “OK, we’ve gotten through inductively figuring out how the present perfect is different from the past tense. Check. We’ve engaged in a spate of mental gymnastics filling in blanks in a series of PPT sentences. Aha! Used a technological resource. Check. Looked at lines of prose and eliciting individually in a crisscross pattern among students sitting in a U-shape that facilitates eye contact and intelligible oral exchanges…. decided which sentences contain the present perfect tense and why that tense was used in those situations. Check. Now it must be time for pairwork. Right. So the students are given the assignment to work in pairs on exercise B on page 46 of their textbook. Right timing; ineffective strategy. If the students are naturally gregarious, they will do the exercise collaboratively, or at least verify whether their responses match. But, was there anything about the exercise which necessitated a joint exchange, mutual input, utterance and response? If the answer is “no”, then you don’t have pairwork; you have two individuals sitting side by side engaged in a similar task which can be carried out without the “correspondence” of two people who depend on each other’s contributions to achieve a requested result. 

The following are a few examples of textbook-type set-ups that result in genuine pairwork.

Two students have cue cards which indicate the direction a question & answer exchange might take:  Policeman vs person suspected of automobile theft.   

              P:    for the past three hours

              T:    shopping mall

              P:    own the car you are driving

             T:    two years                                     

Students receive A & B dialog cards to practice role-play situations which include the structure or vocabulary in focus and which can be sequentially shared whole-class; these varied dialogs can also be rotated from pair to pair in closely timed progression.

Two students exchange comments on the ways in which a city has changed in the past few years, the ways in which parental rules have been modified, the changes that have taken place in common domestic technology.

Students pair up to ask and answer questions which will result in the creation of an ID profile card which can then be shared with the rest of the group. Ex: Where have you lived, worked, studied, traveled – etc – in the last two years?

 Variations of these possibilities are as infinite as our general inclination to communicate, and can be found by way of multiple resources, including – most probably – the textbooks you are currently using. But awareness is key in your inclusion of pairwork in your lesson plan:  as regards your students, if they’re not sharing, they’re not pairing. 

Katy Cox

Song Activities for the EFL Classroom

Music is undeniably a great and effective tool for language learning. We can use songs to encourage language awareness in many different levels, from semantic aspects to grammar structures. It can also lighten up our classes and motivate our students to practice English in fun ways.

Our CTJ teachers Jorge Alexandre and Cleide Frazão presented a while ago in one of our seminars about different ways to use songs in the classroom. The presentation became a project and now teachers can retrieve ready-to-use musical resources in their classes with just one click!

Check the wonderful activities and artifacts that Cleide is constantly creating and sharing with our Educational Community.

http://songactivities.blogspot.com.br/

http://songactivities.blogspot.com.br/2013/10/subject-x-object-pronouns.html

mLearning - The One Ipad Classroom

I had the wonderful opportunity of going go to Dallas last March to attend the TESOL 2013 Convention.  It was great, not only participating in workshops, plenaries, and a variety of presentations, but also meeting other English teachers and exchanging ideas and experiences with them.

Before choosing the presentations I wanted to attend, I focused on the ones which involved technology in the classroom or the ones related to practical activities for EFL classes. After attending so many presentations related to these topics, I came across the theme: The one iPad classroom.  The concrete ideas I was introduced to made me feel enthusiastic to use more technology in class. In this post, I would like to share some of those ideas related to the use of only one iPad in an English class.

Although we are in the 21^st century and technology is all around, teachers still face difficulties in having computers available for each student in all the classes of the course. Having iPads in the classroom is a trend, but not the reality we have today. Only few schools offer iPads to the students’ use in class, and even then, teachers have to share those iPads with their co-workers.

What I would like to show here is that, if a teacher has his/her own iPad, she/he can make use of it in class and benefit students with technology. Or, if the school provides one iPad for teacher use only, it is still possible to make a profitable use in class.

Here is a list of apps that can be used in class and my suggestions for their uses.

PingPong ScoreBoard Lite (Lin Huangchun)

This app is wonderful to score points when using a game in class.  The teacher does not need to stand and score the points on the board anymore. The teacher may use the projector for the game, and the iPad for the score.

Stick pick (Buzz Garwood)

This app helps the teacher to call on students in a fun way.

Timer (Francis Bonnin)

This app is very useful to establish time for the activities. Students can keep track of the time they have to do the activities.

Bola de Cristal HD Free (CATEATER, LLC)

It is useful if you are working the second Conditions. Students formulate questions, the teacher shakes the iPad and the students see the answers in the projector. They usually have a lot of fun.

Word Game: Taboo – Free (Yasarcan Kasal)

Students sit in pairs, facing one another. One student sits back to the boards. The teacher projects the word on the board and the other students has to describe the word avoiding the taboo words.

Tap Roulette (Laan Labs)

Students have a lot of fun. It is useful to decide which student answers the question, or in many other situations. Up to 5 students tap the iPad using one finger and the program chooses only one person.

Doodle Buddy for iPad – Paind, Draw, … (Pinger, Inc.)

The teacher can call on one student at a time, offer an iPad pen, and ask the student to draw something related to what is being studied so that the other students have to guess. The image is projected on the whiteboard.  Alternating students, they have a lot of fun.

Dice!  (Russel Gray)

Games are part of our classes. Teachers can vary the way of scoring them by giving dice (in the iPad) so that students have to roll it and get the points. They have a lot of fun!

Books 

there are many free books for young children which you can project on the board and read to your students or even play the audio.

Dictionaries 

Having one iPad available in class when working with literature books reading, facilitates students access to the meaning of the words. The iPad can be connected to the projector so that the other students of the groups have access of the definition of the words.

These suggestions will provide an opportunity for teachers to reflect upon the use of technology in the classroom taking into consideration the many ways of using iPads with students, even if there is only one in class.

Dare, innovate, ask experts, read for extra information, but put in practice everything you know and see what can happen if you have the will to go beyond.

After pointing out these suggestions, I would like to add that I strongly believe teachers must never give up going the extra mile and looking for challenges to enhance their careers. I would like to thank Casa Thomas Jefferson for giving me so many opportunities to improve my teaching skills and make myself a better teacher.

IATEFL 2013 - Pronunciation for Listening

One of the talks I attended at IATEFL was Pronunciation for Listeners – Making sense of connected speech, by Mark Hancock. I already knew Mark from his blog and his published materials, so I made it a point to attend his talk. It was certainly worth it!

The best part was to know that I wouldn’t have to copy anything or take pictures of the slides. I already knew that Mark is all about sharing his materials and his talks and was certain that, later on, I would find everything online.

Sure enough, in his ELT page with Annie McDonald, Mark has posted the handout and the recording of his talk.  Thus, rather than reading my summary of his presentation, you can experience it first hand.

Mark’s talk was useful in demonstrating to the audience that pronunciation is also a listening skill and that it isn’t always easy for students to know where one word ends and the next begins when they listen. Thus, we need to train our students to listen, and to do so, we need to develop in them an awareness of the supra-segmental features that come to play in natural speech, such as elision, assimilation, and the like. To this end, Mark suggests a series of what he calls micro-listening activities that are really fun.

Among my favorite ones presented at IATEFL was the –ed = t maze. Students have to work their way through the maze by going from one –ed = t combination to the next. The interesting thing about it is that he presents the verb and an object that starts with a vowel so that they can practice the elision that is so common in verb + object combinations such as “booked a room”.

Check out the recording of his talk and his handout. He also has an article and an interview on this topic. Make sure you also explore his website full of rich resources for effective pronunciation teaching.

TESOL 2013 - My Reflections Upon M-Learning

How long has it been since you heard the term “m-learning “ for the first time? Well, in my case it was in 2010. Not long ago, right? As a matter of fact,  that might be true for you, too! But how much of your time have you actually dedicated to learning more about m-learning and how it is affecting the way we teach today?I am a huge educational technology enthusiast and I would like to share some of my reflections and discoveries upon this theme based on  events I have attended and books and articles I have read recently.

 I`ve been to several different conferences before and it  is still not very common to find many sessions on m-learning. During this year`s TESOL Conference, for instance, I tried to attend as many m-learning sessions as possible but the options were very limited. There were  fewer than 10 (including the session delivered by Lilian Marchesoni and me) and most addressed similar content, such as using QR codes and other widely known apps like Educreations, Popplet and Show Me.  These numbers are ridiculous if you consider that there were over a thousand speakers at the event!

So, was I frustrated? Definitely not! The use of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in the classroom is a very recent trend in education and not many professionals are familiar with it. However, the number of teachers who seek innovation in their teaching practices through mobile technology grows each year as such gadgets become more popular and accessible. It is a growing movement which seems to have no turning back  and it means wee need to be better prepared to deal with the current technology.

Learning through mobility (while you are in movement) is actually not a very new and innovative concept. For many decades, people  carried books, magazines and paper notebooks with them.  Learners , thus, could always choose where and when to learn if they had access to those “portable devices” . Today, however, such “devices” have evolved to very sophisticated gadgets,  giving “mobile” a whole new meaning and status.

So, how can we take full advantage of such rich and and unique resources and make the teaching and learning experience as effective as possible?  Unfortunately, the answer for that question is not 100% known yet. Because it is a very recent phenomenon, there aren`t many scientific studies or published books linked to this field . We are actually living the blossoming of mobile computing and transformations in the teaching practice are taking shape as we speak.

But is m-learning just a fad or should we teachers embark upon this venture? Well, how many times have you already had to tell your students to turn their cellphones off while teaching something very important on the board? I am sure you will not be able to answer this question! We cannot ignore the presence of such devices in the classroom anymore! Dede(2005) states that we are witnessing the rise of generation Y and that the new technologies offered clearly match a new profile.  This new generation of learners belong to a group labeled as “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001), that is, people who were born after 1982 and grew up in the Internet era, surrounded by many of the tech gadgets we know and use today.For them,  the traditional education centered in the teacher and developed in  a linear way does not make sense. They are used to acting instead of watching or taking things passively. Instead of simply absorbing knowledge, this generation is used to producing it individually and in groups and sharing it in social networks.  No wonder why Orkut, Facebook and Twitter have become so popular. Moreover, materials produced by this generation do not rely on text and written materials only, but rather on images, sounds and animations, in other words, the use of multiple medias.  In sum, The Y generation is empowered by the massive use of technology and that is why the use of mobile devices should be considered aserious issue and an important element in the teaching and learning process of today`s generation.

M-learning has become such an important educational issue that UNESCO (United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization) launched a document called “ Policy Guidelines for Mobile Learning” in February which listed down 13 unique benefits of mobile learning. According to UNESCO, mobile learning:

·      expands the reach and equity of education

·      facilitates personalized learning

·      provides immediate feedback and assessment

·      enables anytime, anywhere learning

·      ensures the productive use of time spent in classrooms

·      builds new communities of learners

·      supports situated learning

·      enhances seamless learning

·      bridges formal and informal learning

·      minimizes educational disruption in conflict and disaster areas

·      assists learners´ disabilities

·      improves communication and administration

·      maximizes cost-efficiency

This document not only adresses the use of mobile devices in the classroom but also the unique opportunities it can bring to distance and ubiquitous learning experiences. By the way, as a matter of fact, after attending several seminars, workshops,and webinars and reading a few books, I learned that m-learning is not limited to what we might know as “using  smartphones and tablets in the classroom” but it also comprises the use of devices to enable distance learning (online education).

So, should we then start using mobile devices on a daily basis? Not really.The use of technology itself does not imply innovation in education.  Indeed, the indiscriminate use of technology in the classroom might lead to ineffective  learning outcomes.  We need to leave the initial “enchantment” behind and focus on the true potential of technology. M-learning practices might have a focus on  its technological nature rather than the pedagogical one and that is exactly what should not happen.  Mobile devices were not specifically designed for educational purposes, so their use should be carefully planned.It is still very common to see teachers using mobile devices in practices that simply reproduce what is in the book. Honestly speaking, there is no point in taking advantage of technology if it will not improve the quality of learning.  So when is the use of mobile devices appropriate? Brazilian EFL teacher and EdTech guru, Carla Arena, likes to bring up a question which, in my opinion, is perfect to solve this dilemma :” Can you do the same thing and have the same outcome if you don`t resort to technology?  If the answer is yes, then you should think twice and consider not using it.”

According to WIN (Worldwide Independent Network of Market Research), the use of mobile devices is growing at a staggering rate all over the world.  On average,  people spend  74 minutes a day using smartphones and  71 minutes using tablets. It is thus,  paramount that we, educators, researchers and teachers observe how users handle these protable devices, how they access information, how they communicate, interact, produce and share knowledge and information. These are elements that can signal how technology can contribute to major changes in the way we think, solve problems, live and teach.In the March 2013 issue of Você S/A, a Brazilian magazine, there is a very interesting article on how technology is quickly affecting human behavior. In the article,  Kelly McGonigal, a professor at Stanford Univerity, claims that recent studies have shown that the human brain has adapted to the digital era in the sense that we starve for information just as we feel the need to eat food in order to survive.That certainly explains why people feel the need to be “connected” 24/7. Don`t you think this is another issue that we teachers also need to look at closely if we want to deal with technology in our teaching practices?

So, when going to the next seminar or conference, how about picking some sessions which address the use of  smartphones and tablets in the classroom?  Attending the sessions on m-learning at TESOL 2013 definitely contributed to my better understanding of this complex universe in which m-learning is inserted and has definitely been helping me make better decisions regarding the general use of technology in my teaching practices. By the way, have you heard of the new terms “digital visitor” and “digital resident”? I have recently learned that there is a new current which prefers to use such terms instead of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”? When it comes to technology-related issues, concepts, trends and practices might change as quickly as technology itself. I guess we all need to get used to this new dynamics if we want to be a teacher in the 21st century!

 

References:

DEDE, C. Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles. Available at: http://net.educase/ir/library/pdf/eqm0511.pdf. Accessed: April 18,2013.

Jornal Destak. Uso de smartphones no Brasil duplica. Available at: http://www.destakjornal.com.br/noticias/tecno/uso-de-smartphones-no-brasil-duplica-190696/.Accessed: April 23, 2013.

MARINO, C.; NEVES; N.; ROSSI, L. Viramos Escravos da Tecnologia? Ela pode melhorar sua produtividade ou disparar sua ansiedade. Como usar as ferramentas da tecnologia a seu favor no trabalho. Revista Você S/A, São Paulo, issue 178. March, 2013. (pages 27-37)

PRENSKY, M. Digital natives,digital immigrants, 2001. Available at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf. Acessed: April 20, 2013.

SACCOL, A.; SCHLEMMER, E. ; BARBOSA, J. M-learning e u-learning: novas perspectivas das aprendizagens móvel e ubíqua. São Paulo: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011.

UNESCO. Policy guidelines for mobile learning. Paris. February, 2013. Available at <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002196/219641e.pdf> Access: March 2, 2013.